Shlomo Avineri, an Israeli political scientist, historian and former government official whose pessimism about resolving the conflict with the Palestinians did not prevent him from advocating measures to alleviate it, died on November 30 in Jerusalem. He was 90 years old.
His death, which occurred in a hospital, was confirmed by the Hebrew University, also in Jerusalem, where he taught, as well as by his daughter and only immediate survivor, Maayan Avineri-Rebhun.
Mr. Avineri was what Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s former ambassador to the United States, called a public intellectual: a scholar of Marx, Hegel and Zionism who parlayed his academic eminence into a column he written for the Haaretz newspaper; who was often quoted by journalists; and who played a role in peace negotiations with King Hussein of Jordan when Mr. Avineri was director general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, a position he held from 1975 to 1977.
He was considered “pretty conciliatory,” Mr. Rabinovich said in a telephone interview. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, noted that Mr. Avineri was “one of the first prominent Israelis to call for negotiations with the PLO.” ” However, he added, Mr. Avineri would later become “a powerful critic” of the Palestinian national movement “under the impact of the Intifada and suicide bombings.
Mr. Avineri immigrated from Poland with his parents in the 1930s, and Zionism was in his bones. “He was someone who had deep empathy for the other side, but not at the expense of Israel’s defense,” Mr. Halevi said.
In his writings in Haaretz and elsewhere, Mr. Avineri has always been skeptical about Israel’s chances of achieving peace with its enemies. He was convinced of Palestinian and Arab hatred of Israel and Zionism, whose 19th-century roots he chronicled in 1981 in an admired book, “The Making of Modern Zionism.”
The Hamas attack in Israel on October 7 only reinforced this view. Immediately afterwards, speaking to the New York Times, he noted what he said was Hamas’ view that in Israel “every civilian is a soldier.”
“This was not about rhetoric,” he said, “but about identifying the vulnerability of Israeli communities in Israel.”
This was consistent with views he had long expressed that led some critics to question the position of some Israeli liberals. In 2015, Mr. Avineri wrote in Haaretz that “there is no choice but to admit that there is no chance of reaching a mutually accepted agreement in the near future.”
This “pessimistic prognosis,” he added, “calls for alternatives, not to “resolve” the conflict, but to lessen its severity and perhaps lead both sides to ultimately reach an agreed solution.” .
The reasons for his pessimism seemed obvious to him. The Palestinians, he writes, do not consider Israel as a nation but as “an illegitimate entity, doomed sooner or later to disappear.”
But in the same Haaretz column, Mr. Avineri called for palliative measures that he presented as gestures of goodwill, such as stopping construction in settlements in the occupied territories and promising financial aid. to settlers who would agree to return to Israel.
“I thought that realpolitik The approach was better,” said Avner de-Shalit, a former student of Mar. Avineri and later colleague in the political science department at the Hebrew University. “I thought you had to keep your eyes open all the time.”
In other columns, Mr. Avineri called for “concrete measures that will not lead to peace”; he praised the “historical roots” of Israeli democracy while doubting the ability of Arab states to achieve democracy themselves; and expressed reservations about economic cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian territories.
This tension, between a desire for peace and a skepticism about proposals to advance it, permeated his journalism. This led historian Tony Judt to write in The New York Review of Books that Mr. Avineri and other Israeli liberals “have gone largely astray” and to criticize him for forgetting that “every context has its context”, particularly that of the masses. displacement of Palestinians in 1948.
Mr. Avineri was widely admired for his original studies of difficult thinkers of the 19th century. His book “The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx” (1968) “breaks new ground,” George Lichtheim wrote in the New York Review of Books, adding that Mr. Avineri was “innovative.” “He is right to point out that political democracy remains a problem for Marx and his followers.”
Another book, “Hegel’s Political Philosophy: Problems and Perspectives,” was “highly erudite, but never oppressive,” Anthony Quinton wrote in that same publication in 1975, comparing Mr. Avineri to PG Wodehouse. “Avineri is the Jeeves of the Absolute Idea,” he writes. “To the Hegelian equivalents of Woosterisms such as ‘throw it all, a blow on the noggin is a bit of a face’, he responds with something like ‘I agree, Sir, that a sharp blow on the head is a source of concern. ‘”
“The Creation of Modern Zionism” was praised by the specialist in political philosophy Werner J. Dannhauser in the New York Times book review for his “undoubtedly great achievements”. He praised Mr. Avineri for denouncing what he called left-wing “slanders” about Zionism’s alleged “unconsciousness about the very existence of Arabs.”
Before writing these books, as a young professor, Mr. Avineri had dazzled students at the Hebrew University with his erudition.
“In the 1960s, there was a young, brilliant, and charismatic professor who filled the lecture halls of the political science department at the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,” Uri Benziman wrote in Haaretz in a 2015 article also critical of Mr. Avineri for his comments. by failing to provide context for some of its conclusions. “Shlomo Avineri fascinated students with the breadth of his knowledge and the finesse of his analysis during classes on political thought.”
Shlomo Avineri was born on August 20, 1933 in Bielsko-Biala, Poland, the son of Michael and Ester-Erna (Gruner) Wiener. His father was an accountant, his mother a professional secretary. He emigrated to Palestine with his parents in 1939. He earned his doctorate at the Hebrew University, where he later became head of the political science department and dean of the school of social sciences.
His wife, Devora, died in 2022.
Mr. Avineri had a distinguished academic career behind him when he joined the Israeli Foreign Ministry in 1975 as director general of Yitzhak Rabin’s government. His humanism shaped his approach to negotiations over the future of the Palestinians, as reflected in a 1970 article in Commentary. “What I have in mind specifically,” he writes, “is a discussion with the Palestinians now under Israeli domination regarding the possibility of establishing a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza. »
This was beyond what many Israelis were willing to accept, at least in public. And when the conservative Likud party came to power, Mr. Avineri was absent.
While his views hardened over the years, he remained “like a guru to many people on the moderate left in Israel,” Mr. de Shalit said, adding: “He used to say, ‘I I’m one of the few Israelis who I don’t know what the future of this region will be.
Steven Erlanger And Myra Noveck reports contributed. Kitty Bennett And Susan Beachy contributed to the research.
